More than 20 schools that asked to defer their Ofsted inspection this term had their request rejected by the watchdog, new figures show.

Ofsted has today published data showing how many deferral requests it has received and accepted since routine inspections returned in September.

It comes amid calls from school leaders for the watchdog to grant all such requests from schools related to Covid and to provide greater transparency over the number of requests declined.

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Tes revealed last month that Ofsted had rejected around a third of requests from schools asking to defer inspections this term because of Covid-19 disruption. The inspectorate did not provide figures for the number of schools that had been granted or declined deferrals.

At the time, the watchdog said that where it had granted deferral requests, these had typically related to significant staff or pupil absences.

The new figures published today show that 80 state schools have asked for inspections to be deferred since September but does not show how many of these requests relate to Covid disruption.

Of the 80 schools, 59 (74 per cent) had their request accepted while 21 (26 per cent) were rejected.

Increasing willingness to defer

The figures show that Ofsted has been accepting an increasing number of deferral requests from schools since October.

In October, it rejected 28.5 per cent of deferral requests, while in November this fell to 26.3 per cent, and in December this dropped further to 23.5 per cent.

Inspection deferral requests from state schools in the Autumn term 2021

Overall, Ofsted has had 95 requests for inspection deferrals, including those from further education colleges and private schools. Of these, 26 have been declined.

Ofsted resumed a programme of full inspection in September but this has faced accusations that inspectors are not doing enough to take the impact of Covid into account.

The figures come after the Association of School and College Leaders called for Ofsted to change its deferral policy to allow any school to postpone inspections this term if leaders deem this necessary due to Covid disruption.

Ofsted has said that its own survey findings have shown that 88 per cent of leaders were satisfied with the overall process of their inspection and 91 per cent thought that their inspection will help them improve.